Re: suppress fatal pathspec errors from "git add"?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 3, 2010, 08:12 UTC
Message-ID: <7vk4vz38v0.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20100103074058.GB23031@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> ... I could see it
> if your workflow were something like "in a script, add these N files if
> they exist, but it is not an error if they don't". But I still don't
> think you would want to ignore all errors; you would want to do
> something like:
>
>   $ git add $(for i in foo bar baz; do test -e $i && echo $i; done)
>
> instead. Am I missing something?

If your primary activity that happens in the work tree were:

	while :
        do
        	file=$(date +"random-%H%M%S")
                >"$file"
                rm -f "$file"
	done

and your add were done in

	while sleep 3600
        do
		git add $(for i in *; do test -e $i && echo $i; done)
                git commit -m "hourly snapshot"
	done

totally asynchronously without coordinating with what the primary activity is doing, your "test -e && echo" can race with a concurrent "rm".

Even though I think it is an insane use pattern that we shouldn't bother to bend too much backwards to support it, --ignore-errors were added primarily for a similar use case (i.e. by the time we try to read it, it is either gone or it cannot be read by the user who runs "git add"), so in that sense it _might_ make sense to ignore all errors with the option. If we choose to go in that direction, it would also make tons of sense to update the documentation of the option to caution more strongly that its use is a sign of insanity and is discouraged at the same time.